Before we go into this week’s topic, I want to take a moment to remember a good friend, co-worker and one of the biggest fans of this column, in the passing of Pat Jamieson.
Many were the days when Pat and I would sit at the Catalina Islander offices, tossing ideas around for future Mysterious Island columns. She always wanted to hear the latest little story treasures we had dug up and was enthralled with everything from historical oddities and buried treasure stories to UFO accounts.
Before we go into this week’s topic, I want to take a moment to remember a good friend, co-worker and one of the biggest fans of this column, in the passing of Pat Jamieson.
Many were the days when Pat and I would sit at the Catalina Islander offices, tossing ideas around for future Mysterious Island columns. She always wanted to hear the latest little story treasures we had dug up and was enthralled with everything from historical oddities and buried treasure stories to UFO accounts.
I had known Pat for at least a decade and, being a former hotel manager, I often worked with her in her duties with the Chamber of Commerce where she had worked prior to joining the Catalina Islander.
She was a definite Type-A personality and seemed immune to the “Catalina paralysis” that so many of us fall into out here in our Island paradise, yours truly included.
It’s always appropriate to come up with words of wisdom at times like this and I can think of nothing Pat would enjoy more (and quite fitting for this column) than a passage from Ray Bradbury’s science fiction classic “The Martian Chronicles,” a futuristic tale of humankind’s colonization of Mars.
In the novel, there’s an episode when the obligatory human missionary, Father Peregrine, encounters a super-advanced entity in the form of a blue crystal sphere in the Martian hills.
Naturally, the missionary’s curiosity compels him to discuss life and the meaning of same with this creature. In response, the entity simply states words to the effect that—despite their ability to do just about anything they want and go anywhere in the universe they please—their species has eliminated conflict and tribulation from their lives. They have simply learned to enjoy “just being.”
“We live in happiness,” it said. “For, rest assured, we are happy and at peace.”
Such is the way Pat lived her life and that’s something we can all learn from.
THE SUMMER OF ‘42
All this week, Avalon residents and visitors alike have been treated to one of our most cherished annual celebrations, the Fourth of July.
The town is filled with families sauntering along Front Street, children with ice cream cones and music coming from street musicians, juke boxes and karaoke-makers.
Even after the Fourth itself, with our unique parade of festooned golf carts and our breath-taking evening fireworks display, the harbor will be filled with happy boaters and their dinghies, pushed along by gurgling outboards from yacht to yacht and party to party.
Above it all from Casino Point will fly the American flag with its 50 stars and 13 stripes.
But in the summer of 1942, beneath a 48-star flag, Avalon experienced a very different Fourth of July. It was the first Fourth of July since our entry into the Second World War and while patriotism was running high—perhaps higher than ever before—there was no celebrating, certainly not in the sense we have these days.
This lack of celebration was, of course, due in large part to the fact that there were simply no tourists here to celebrate. By orders of the War Department, most tourism to the Island was prohibited. Add to that the fact that the majority of residents had left the Island to join the military or find work in the great mainland factories that churned out the materiel that would eventually lead us to victory.
Those few residents who stayed here were allowed to come and go, provided they had the proper Coast Guard identification.
Several branches of the military would eventually establish a presence on Catalina at the invitation of Philip K. Wrigley, thereby providing an enormous boost to the local economy. But the summer of ’42 was still too early for that and, prior to the establishment of the U.S. Maritime Service Training Station in October, the residents of Catalina were more pre-occupied with making a living than celebrating.
Many residents relied on what savings they had and “living off the land” became the norm. Victory Gardens bloomed and lifelong Islander Lolo Saldana remembered locals taking advantage of the Island’s bounty of fruit and nut trees, wild game in the interior and, of course, the teeming sea life in the waters around the Island.
The U.S. Navy, too, needed food for their personnel in the far-flung corners of the world and local fishermen were guaranteed a customer for anything they caught. The Navy even footed the bill for all the fuel their little boats could carry.
Behind these activities was always the fear of invasion by the Japanese. While some historians have tried rewriting history by downplaying such a possibility, the threat was indeed very real.
In early 1942, a number of merchant ships were attacked along the California coast by Japanese submarines. The lumber-carrier S.S. Absaroka, for example, was torpedoed just outside of L.A. Harbor right under the noses of the big guns at Fort MacArthur.
Blackout conditions were a nightly requirement in Avalon throughout the war and the local hardware store did big business selling the special black paper that locals used to outfit their windows so they could enjoy at least a modicum of light in the evenings.
While it would still be another few years before Catalina Island could let loose on enjoying the Fourth of July, by the summer of 1943 the military was firmly established on the Island to the great relief of residents. The Battle of Midway had turned the tide of war in the Pacific and the troublesome enemy submarines had been pulled by the Japanese Empire to places they were needed more and more desperately.
This weekend, take a moment to imagine an empty, silent Crescent Avenue and be thankful to those who have kept our right to “party on the Fourth” alive and kicking.
Jim Watson is the author of “Mysterious Island: Catalina,” available on Amazon, Kindle and in stores all over Avalon.
